MSNBC anchor Chuck Todd grilled BuzzFeed Editor Ben Smith on
Wednesday for his decision to publish a dossier of unverified
memos that included
explosive claims about President-elect Donald Trump.

The two engaged in a lengthy back-and-forth about whether
BuzzFeed's publication of the memos was ethical, with Todd at one
point accusing Smith of publishing "fake news."

"I know this was not your intent … but you just published fake
news," Todd said on his show "MTP Daily."

Smith rejected the label and doubled down on the defense he
offered in a note to his staff on Tuesday.

"I think people love to throw the term 'fake news' around to
diminish anything they don't like," Smith said.

"This was a real story about a real document that was really
being passed around between the very top officials of this
country, and then the question you say is, OK — it's OK for you,
Chuck Todd, to see this document, it's OK for me to see it, OK
for John McCain, OK for the CIA, why is not OK for your
audience?" he added.

CNN reported on Tuesday that top US intelligence officials
presented Trump and President Barack Obama with a summary of
classified documents that made explosive claims about Trump and
his ties to Russia. CNN's article did not describe the contents
of the documents, saying they had not been "independently
corroborated."

Shortly after CNN published its report, BuzzFeed published
its own article containing the original 35 pages of leaked
intelligence memos. Although BuzzFeed acknowledged the
information was unverified, its publication of the documents
immediately raised questions among journalists.

"You made a knowing decision to put out an untruth, or at least
something you haven't proven true yet," Todd told Smith on
Wednesday.

But Smith argued that news outlets "no longer have the luxury" of
sitting on sensitive information and that they have an obligation
to let their readers decide the truth for themselves.

"I think this is a place where sunlight is a disinfectant, where
it is important to show your audience what you have," he said.

Todd fired back, "There was a line — when does the line become
yelling 'fire' in a theater?"

Trump
denied the contents of the document at a press conference
Wednesday morning and called BuzzFeed a "failing pile of garbage"
for publishing it.